BuzzFeed Cofounder Jonah Peretti On Not Skimping On Talent

"For BuzzFeed, 2012 was all about hiring great people and having conviction that when you hire great people, despite the cost, great things will happen. It was the year we built the best team in social news, social entertainment, and social advertising. For news, it started with Ben Smith who joined us as editor-in-chief, then Doree Shafrir as Executive Editor, Matt Buchanan to run our tech section, Amy Odell to run Shift, John Stanton as our DC Bureau Chief, Michael Hastings to cover the Obama campaign and other great reporters. For social entertainment, we expanded an incredible team led by Scott Lamb, Matt Stopera, and Jack Shepherd to include Katie Notopoulos, Stacy Lambe, Andrew Gauthier and (through an acquisition) Ze Frank who will build the most exciting creative space for online video at BuzzFeed's new west coast office in LA. And in social advertising, we built on the amazing work of Jon Steinberg, Andy Wiedlin, Eric Harris, John Chan and Tanner Ringerud by hiring Jeff Greenspan as Chief Creative Officer, Chris Baker and Mike Lacher as Creative Director, and we acquired Jeff Revesz's Kingfish labs to beef up our social ad tech. BuzzFeed's success has been driven by bringing talented, creative people together and giving them the opportunity to do amazing work.